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Here in Judah we are now praying for you.
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"In the year 169, when Demetrius the Second was king of Syria, we wrote to tell you about the persecution and the hard times that came upon us in the years after Jason revolted against authority in the Holy Land.
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Jason and his men set fire to the Temple gates and slaughtered innocent people. Then we prayed to the Lord and he answered our prayers. So we sacrificed animals, gave offerings of grain, lit the lamps in the Temple, and set out the sacred loaves.
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This is why we urge you to celebrate in the month of Kislev a festival similar to the Festival of Shelters. Written in the year 188."
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"From the Jews of Jerusalem and Judea, the Jewish Senate, and Judas, to Aristobulus, a descendant of priests and the teacher of King Ptolemy, and to the Jews in Egypt, greetings and good health.
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"We thank God because he saved us from great danger. We were like men ready to fight against a king,
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but God drove the enemy from our holy city.
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When King Antiochus arrived in Persia, his army seemed impossible to defeat, but they were cut to pieces in the temple of the goddess Nanea by an act of treachery on the part of her priests.
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King Antiochus had gone to the temple with some of his most trusted advisers, so that he might marry the goddess and then take away most of the temple treasures as a wedding gift.
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After the priests had laid out the treasure, he and a few of his men went into the temple to collect it. But the priests closed the doors behind him
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and stoned him and his men from trap doors hidden in the ceiling. Then they cut up the bodies and threw the heads to the people outside.